


Embroidery Lessons

by mrstater



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Marriage, Pre-Canon, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-27
Updated: 2012-06-27
Packaged: 2017-11-08 17:27:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/445671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrstater/pseuds/mrstater
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the she-bears don't appreciate Lynesse's feminine pursuits, the Lord of House Mormont reveals a taste for the finer things. [pre-canon]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Embroidery Lessons

  
"You darned my stockings, I see."   
  
Lynesse glanced up from stitching one of her own stockings as her husband sat on a wooden bench at the foot of the bed-- _their_ bed, she reminded herself, though she wished she had not--a hulking thing of unpolished oak with bears carved on the headboard and on the posts which always seemed to be watching her. Jorah's smallclothes were just visible beneath the hem of his shirt as he lifted one hairy leg to tug a sock onto his hairy foot. Thank the gods.   
  
"Maege did." She flicked her gaze downward again to the yellow thread as she drew it through finely woven cloth of the stocking, the embroidered pattern just beginning to take the recognizable shape of a bird's head soaring upward into the pale blue sky. "I'm afraid I am too accustomed to delicate sewing to be of much use mending."  
  
"I'm sure Maege could show you." Jorah lowered his foot onto the floor and then drew the bare one up to put a stocking on it. "She taught her girls."  
  
 _Mending isn't the work of a lady_ , Lynesse thought, but did not say. She was sick unto death of arguing with Jorah about what ladies did and did not do, and that his aunt and young cousins were ladies because of their birth, not because of what they busied their hands with. And why didn't he darn his own bloody stockings? He could handle a needle well enough; she'd watched him mend and make fishing nets, and he talked of stitching men up after hunting accidents or on the field of battle when there was no maester near enough.   
  
"I offered to teach the girls embroidery."   
  
"That was kind of you." Jorah stood to pull his breeches up over his thighs, and began to lace them. "Though I imagine Maege liked that idea as much as you liked the idea of darning stockings?"  
  
Lynesse hunched lower over her handiwork as a flush crept up her neck and into her cheeks. "To my face she said fine silk thread costs dear, though I'm sure she was thinking that embroidered stockings are as useful to a She-bear as…well, you're familiar with that little saying about breastplates."   
  
She wondered if Maege had told Alysane and Dacey about the conversation; if the girls had roared--Alysane, anyway; Dacey, at least, had the grace to giggle, if not exactly as a lady should--and called her Lynesse High-horse as she'd overheard on more than one occasion.   
  
"Maege would be wrong."   
  
Lynesse looked up at her husband as his shadow--big enough to have been a bear's--fell over her lap, making it impossible even if she squinted to see the tiny yellow stitches against the blue cloth. He lowered himself to his knees before her, his hands pawing at the bottom of her skirt and the woolen petticoat she'd grudgingly begun to wear in concession to the northern climes, bunching them in one hand above her knees to reveal stockings of lichen green with pink and red roses climbing up over her calves. Two fingers pinched the end of the pink ribbon tied round her knee to keep the stockings up, and tugged it loose. She sucked in her breath at the warmth of the callused fingertips as they slipped beneath the edge of the stocking and rolled it down a bit, and of his breath and lips and he leaned in to press a kiss to her knee as he bared it.   
  
"Embroidered stockings are, indeed, useful," he murmured against the inside of her knee as he kissed it, too, slowly working her stocking--and his lips--down her calf, her ankle, even the top of her foot, until he had removed the garment completely.   
  
Lynesse's work lay abandoned across her lap, her hands having moved to grasp the edges of her chair as her husband's attentions made her light-headed. "You could just as easily seduce me if I wore plain knitted wool stockings."  
  
"But _would_ I?" he rasped against her skin, peering at her over the pale rise of her other knee with eyes darkened in lust…and something else. "Lynesse, I love you because you are unlike any other lady I have ever known."  
  
There had been times over the weeks since Jorah brought her to Bear Island that she'd wondered if she hadn't fallen out of love with him, but this moment was not one of them. In fact, she thought she'd never loved him more than she did now.   
  
"If you like my stockings," she said, hitching up her skirts even higher, and spreading her legs, "wait till you see what I've embroidered on my smallclothes."


End file.
